Blackmail
Director: Vijay Anand
Music: Kalyanji-Anandji
Year: 1973
Duration: 131 minutes
Little did I know that India was far ahead
of the curve on developing renewable energy. Back in 1973 Kailash (Dharmendra)
and his badly bewigged scientist friend Khurana (Madan Puri) invent a process
of utilizing the sun’s rays to derive enough energy to provide electricity
for their entire city! With this invention Kailash proclaims that India
will soon equal the United States as one of the most developed countries
in the world. When he is not saving the world from future global warming
Kailash is having his heart warmed over by Asha (Rakhee), the daughter
of a friend of his dead father’s. He is a tongue-tied suitor though and
is unable to approach her with anything more than a blush. As it turns
out she is engaged of sorts to the charming rogue Jeevan (Shatrugan Sinha)
who is not only her father’s (great veteran actor Iftikhar) choice but
also a good friend to Kailash.
Thus it seems a bit odd when Jeevan begins to
do his best to push Kailash and Asha together – is this true friendship
or . . . perhaps something more sinister? If you chose the latter, you
would be correct as Jeevan embarks on a plot so convoluted and devious
that you will need to take notes to understand it. He imports a gang of
Italian hoods who cleverly disguise themselves as professional golfers
with bad golf fashions and worse swings. With them he plans to steal the
formula for the sun ray converter, but first of course he has to get Kailash
to court Asha, get Asha to fall for him, get them married and then break
them up! What a dastardly villain! With shockingly ruinous photos of him
embracing Asha, Jeevan will use anything necessary (blackmail, a buxom
nurse and a forest fire) to get what he wants.
It is perhaps needless to say that much of this
is totally silly and rather pointless and not as much fun as it may sound
(though the usual bad fashions and esoteric interior designs of those times
do add to the pleasure factor). Various kidnappings take place and finally
near the end Dharmendra gets to show his fighting chops as his character
takes on the entire gang with the able assistance of Asha conking lamps
upon various heads. One scene though in particular had more sexual electricity
than a dozen Indian films. Kailash and Asha have yet to consummate their
marriage due to the skullduggery of Jeevan and at one point they are hiding
from his henchmen in a small cramped tool shed and forced by their proximity
to touch each other and finally they get down to business with dogs barking
around them, men hunting them and a forest fire surrounding them! Let’s
just say they had put it off for a bit too long.
The film is well-served by a very nice score with
two songs in particular as standouts - Doob Jaata Hoon which shows up on
loads of classic CD compilations and is picturized by Sinha rolling around
on the ground a lot and Rakhee skipping through the trees and then later
in the film Kailash expresses his love for Asha in the lovely ballad Pal
Pal Dil through a set of love letters – “Every moment of my life you are
close to my heart”.
The main positive for me though was that I came
across two actors who are very well-known in the industry but I had never
crossed their tracks before. Shatrugan Sinha played some of the slickest
villains in Bollywood – not the usual eye bugging maniacs but one who oozed
with charm and gab as he picked your back pocket. Later he became one of
the early members of the Bharatiya Janata Party – the Hindi nationalist
party – and served in the cabinet (and likely as a politician still picked
a few pockets!). He is still a big personality in Bollywood with appearances
at award shows and a magazine column. Rakhee simply had one of the loveliest
faces in Bollywood during the 1970’s – full lips, arched eyebrows and astonishing
eyes that are almost surreal – though admittedly her full figure would
not stand a chance in today’s film industry. She hailed from Bengal and
began in the Bengali film industry before moving to Mumbai and becoming
a star in the 1971 film Sharmilee. Other notable films were Trishul, Lawaaris
and Kabhie Kabhie. She often co-starred with Amitabh Bachchan and had the
interesting experience of having played his lover in early films and his
mother in later ones. She also married famed lyricist Gulzar and worked
till 2003. Her daughter is Meghna Gulzar, one of the very few female directors
in Bollywood (Filhaal, Just Married, Dus Kahaniyaan).
Btw – it should be mentioned that sadly the formula
was lost in the making of this film and solar energy was put on the backburner
for a generation.
My rating for this film: 7.0